New survey shows that platforms struggle to earn consumers’ trust

In a new market study released earlier this week in Canada, customers trust regarding social media networks ranked lower than banks, telecommunication companies and pharmaceutical companies. Energy industry, pipelines and resource companies ranked equal as networking among client’s trust preferences.

“It’s surprising. These are relatively new industries, they haven’t had a lot of time to accumulate baggage, but there’s something about what’s going on that is not creating trust. If you think about a 10-year-old social media company with the same level of trust as a pipeline company, it’s astounding,” Environics CEO Bruce MacLellan commented.

The explanation for people’s lack of trust when it comes to social networking platforms comes from advertising truth and accuracy lack of trust, as well as consumer’s concern over what’s happening with their private data.

“The whole privacy issue is a huge part of this. People are wary about what’s going on with that content, and how it’s being used. I also think our society lives in continual fear of data breach. The real issue here is customer loyalty. If there’s ever competition that comes up, lack of loyalty is going to hurt them. So building trust, as a way to build loyalty, is very important.” Mr. MacLellan concluded.

Nevertheless, print, TV, radio or on-line ads ranked lower than social media on the consumers’ trust scale.

PR firm Edelman also surveyed the market to discover that overall business trust has declined when compared to previous years, based on the same reasons.